Grade 4 Term 2 Curriculum News 2021
Grade Four Curriculum Newsletter Term 2 2021
This Term Newsletter will provide you with information about your children’s upcoming teaching and learning experiences in the new term. There is also plenty of additional information provided via Compass throughout the school year, so please make a point of touching base regularly.
General
Well done on a fabulous start to the year, Grade Four. We hope you all enjoy a safe and happy Easter over the holidays! With our children engaged in new and exciting learning throughout Term One, time has simply flown by! The Grade Four team has enjoyed getting to know your children over the past ten weeks and watching them grow! With Term Two upon us, we are ready for another fantastic term of learning!
Literacy
During Term 1, students worked together and did a fantastic job of setting up their classroom libraries. Teachers are highly impressed with the way the Grade 4 students are utilising their classroom libraries to ensure they are reading exciting texts that are ‘Just Right’ for them. In Term 2, students will be practising a range of reading comprehension skills including predicting, clarifying, questioning, inferring, visualising and summarising. Alongside their regular Independent Reading, students will be partaking in Guided Reading sessions to better target their areas of need. Please note that some of the texts used during these sessions will be sourced from Epic! Online, so please make sure that your son or daughter’s iPad is charged, updated (if necessary) and brought to school each day.
In Writing, teachers have been pleased to see the wonderful way in which students are using their Writers’ Notebooks to write in a range of genres, and the way they are taking risks to experiment using new vocabulary. Students have been recording new and interesting words in their Wonderful Words book to be used later in their writing. You can support your child by using new words in conversations and discussing their meaning. This term, students will be writing narratives, biographies, information reports and scripts to support their Inquiry topic of ‘Early Explorers’.
Mathematics
Students have a higher chance of being engaged and successful in Mathematics if the content we teach is linked to real-life problems.
In Term Two, students will continue to develop their understanding of the Four Processes (+, -, x, ÷). Students will be encouraged to use a variety of problem solving strategies to efficiently and effectively solve a wide range of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems through engaging hands-on tasks, games and real-world written problems. This term, students will also be focusing on measurement, area and perimeter, angles, as well as 2D and 3D shapes.
Inquiry
Our Term 2 Inquiry unit is ‘Early Explorers’. It involves students researching and presenting historical information based on ‘the journeys of a significant world navigator, explorer or trader up to the late eighteenth century, including their contacts with and effects on other societies’ (Victorian Curriculum). The Grade Four students will be involved in developing their research skills, writing a biography on a world explorer, developing their geographical knowledge of the major continents and bodies of water in the world and creating a script to teach others about their explorer.
IPads
iPads are an essential learning tool in Grade 4, and we remind all students to bring their iPad to school fully charged every day. Teachers have set up their new Google Classroom and students will start to receive digital copies of worksheets as well as the option to complete tasks digitally.
Devices
A reminder that Department of Education policy stipulates that phones, watches or other devices with communicative ability cannot be carried by students while on the school premises during school hours, without Principal approval. For further details please refer to the policy documents on Compass and the Lara Lake PS website.
Homework
Homework is handed in to the classroom teacher every Thursday and the expectations are that our students are reading every night as well as completing self-selected maths tasks (Essential Assessment, Sunshine Online, and Sunset). Should you be experiencing any difficulties, please do not hesitate to send a handwritten note through to the classroom teacher or send an email via the Compass app.
Supplies
Thank you to all the families who have so far donated much needed tissues and hand sanitiser. These are essential items for the classroom and we thoroughly appreciate the donations. If you have not yet sent in your donation, please do so at your earliest convenience.